The Player's Club: Scott (10 page)

“This sounds perfect,” she pressed. “I think—no, I
know
I can do this. I can help you out, and then you can help me out. We’ll help each other!”

He knew that feeling. Which was why he didn’t want anyone—even a gorgeous, hell-on-wheels-in-bed blonde—to possibly jeopardize his chance. “Sorry. I just don’t think it’s going to work.”

She frowned. She wasn’t pouting—as Kayla might in her place—she wasn’t using passive-aggressive techniques, guilting him or seducing him. Although honestly, part of him wouldn’t mind it if she tried seducing him to change his mind…

Knock it off,
he scolded his penis.
Let me do the thinking for once.

She sighed. “Well, you’ve got a right to do what you want.”

He nodded, feeling a little guilty anyway. “Um…well.”

“Well.”

She just wanted him because of his connections, he thought, bitterness stabbing at him like a switchblade. He lashed out.

“Guess I’ll be staying away from windows, then.”

Her eyes widened, and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear she looked hurt. She sat up straight like he’d pinched her.

Then her eyes narrowed. She leaned down on the bed next to him, lanky and nude. Her smile was sweet…somehow too sweet.

“Well, with all these adventures, you won’t have time to climb through any windows,” she mused. “And since I’ll have nothing better to do, I guess I’ll just hang out with my best friend.”

He pulled his shirt over his head, standing up. He made for the door.

Her next words stopped him cold.

“Did I mention my best friend’s a reporter?” she asked. “One who’d probably
love
to do a feature about The Player’s Club?”

5

AMANDA SAT UNCOMFORTABLY cross-legged on the hard-packed sand, wondering absently how in the hell she’d ever considered this a good idea.

You wanted to be here. You used blackmail to do it.

A little fact she was still regretting.

“Fine,” Scott had said. “You can go with me to the Mojave. And if you make it—if you don’t complain or chicken out—then I’ll vouch for you. But if you don’t, then you can’t tell
anyone.
Not your reporter, not anyone.”

She’d agreed, and one weekend later, she was here in the Mojave.

She was in this position partially for her desire for adventure, she admitted, but the rest of it was out of pure spite. The thought of him sleeping with her, then saying he wasn’t going to anymore because she’d asked about the Club, had struck her as horribly unfair. Maybe he was the adventurous type, maybe he went through women like bottled water.

Whatever, she thought with hostility. She was tired of being the “nice” girl who was understanding, kind. And boring.

Well-behaved women rarely make history.

“Now, we’re going to enter the mindset of the vision quest. Please take a deep breath, and listen to the sounds of nature,” the dreadlocked guide, Rebecca, said in her best earth-goddess impersonation. There were seventeen other people there with Amanda and Scott. From what Amanda could tell, there were several people who had done this particular camping adventure several times. Their backpacks were well-worn, their hiking boots covered with dust. A few wore tie-dye T-shirts and sported pleasantly vacant smiles, suggesting either a state of camping Zen or perhaps an herbal enhancement. Other people were more like Amanda. Several looked like business types—they had brand-new camp equipment and kept sneaking peeks at their watches. They did not look amused by Rebecca’s encouragement.

Amanda tried, she really did. She closed her eyes. The stillness was startling. She heard all the other campers’ slight shifts of movement, nervous coughs.

After what seemed like forever, Rebecca sighed. “All right. You’ve picked your camping spots. Today, I’m sending you out to go three days and nights into the wilderness. Some of you will find wisdom. Some of you may even have visions.”

Amanda glanced at the guy to her left, who smiled at her with low-lidded, red-rimmed eyes.
Ten bucks says this guy already had a vision,
Amanda thought, then shook her head.

“Drink your water. Blow your whistle if you run into any trouble, and remember, you’ll be leaving a check-in note with your camp buddy every morning, to ensure that you stay safe all three days. All right? Great! Get to it!”

Scott walked alongside Amanda, not looking directly at her. “Doing okay, camp buddy?”

She nodded. They’d scouted sites together the day before, and she’d tossed and turned her way through the night in her new sleeping bag. “Hanging in there,” she said.

He nodded, and they kept walking silently.

Why couldn’t he have gotten a four-star hotel in Bali as an adventure?

But of course, she didn’t have to be here. She’d forced, connived and coerced her way here. There was a big, fat “Be careful what you wish for” proverb here, but she didn’t want to think about it.

They reached the canyon that split their two “camp” sites. “I’ll leave a note checking in,” she said woodenly, starting to strike out toward her solitary plateau.

“My site isn’t too far from yours,” Scott called to her, stopping her. “So yell if you get into any trouble, okay?”

The fact that he actually said it warmed her. “I won’t get into any trouble,” she answered him, lacking the confidence to mean it.

She went off to her campsite, watching with concern as he vanished through a canyon not far away. He was camped on top of a small mesa, but one of the conditions of the vision quest was that they couldn’t be in eyesight of each other. So once he disappeared, she was completely alone.

She frowned. Okay. Three days and nights. No music. No, er, food. She put down her gallons of water and her backpack, and got to work setting up camp.

After an hour, she’d already cut her thumb on a sharp rock. The tarp she was supposed to be using as a tent had become an unwitting parasail, dragging her across the desert before she could get it under control. Her stomach yowled in protest at all the exertion without food. She wished she’d smuggled in a few energy bars or something. Maybe chocolate.

Her stomach
really
yowled when she thought of chocolate.

By the time the sun started setting, she was sweaty, dirty and miserable. She’d taken the tarp and folded it up like a burrito, weighing it down with rocks, then wiggled inside it with her sleeping bag.

She’d done all this because she needed, desperately, to change. To do something that proved her life was more than what it had been.

How’s that working out for you?

She fell asleep, sweating, curled up on her sleeping bag, the wind like a hair dryer. She didn’t even realize she’d fallen into a dream, especially since it felt so real.

She was standing in her candy shop, the first day she’d opened. Orders were piling in: customers were standing four-deep from the counter. She moved endlessly, rolling truffles, dusting them in cocoa, painting some with gold leaf and decorating them with sugared violets. She was so busy, she never knew if it was day or night.

Then, suddenly, Scott walked in, and everyone else disappeared.

“Come with me,” he said, reaching for her, a wicked, sexy grin on his face.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got too much work to do.”

“It’s just work,” he said.

“If I don’t have this, I don’t have anything,” she protested.

He was naked, standing in front of her, looking more delectable than all the candy in her shop put together. “Come with me,” he repeated.

She shook her head, holding her spatula in a death grip. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m scared.”

Those two words surprised her so much, she actually dropped her spatula.

The shop drifted away, and it was just the two of them, in her bed, back in her apartment. “What are you scared of?” he whispered to her.

She hesitated. “I’ve been driven all my life. Everything in my family was about running the restaurant my parents owned. I started working there when I was maybe ten. It was successful. My parents expected nothing less from it, and from my brothers and I. So I learned to be successful.” Tears tumbled down her cheeks. “I married my husband because he was a chef, and I thought we had so much in common. We owned the shop together. But he didn’t love me…not passionately or anything. And I didn’t really love him.”

“So what do you want now?”

She took a deep breath, turning and burying her head against his chest. “I want someone to love me passionately,” she said. “I want to stop worrying about whether or not I’m successful. I want to live life, not just sprint through it.”

“You can have that,” he murmured. “All that, and more.”

“But business is all I’m good at!” she wailed. “I don’t know how to do anything else. I keep thinking I’m screwing this up.”

He chuckled. “Screwing
what
up?”

“This. You, me. Us.” She winced. “Not that I’m angling for a relationship. I don’t even know if I could handle one. But…” She took a deep breath. “I’ve never felt anything like I feel when I’m with you.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m tired of trying to be something I’m not to impress you,” she said, realizing as the words came out that it was true. “I want you to like me for who I am.”

“Then be who you are.”

She shook her head.

“Come to me,” he breathed. “Come to me, just as you are. And see.”

She opened her eyes. It was still pitch-black out, but the moon was full, and she was momentarily dazzled by the brilliant field of stars stretching out across the sky. She’d never seen so many stars in her life. In cities, you
couldn’t
see stars like this.

Come to me.

It’d felt so real.

It was probably foolish, but the moon was so incredibly bright, it was like walking through a negative of the landscape. She could see where she was going. And she found herself tramping through the brush, through the ravine, up the slope. Until she got to the mesa.

Until she got to Scott.

He did have a tarp set up like a tent, and his sleeping bag was bundled up. She wondered if she would wake him.

“Who’s there?” she heard him say, his voice deep and imposing.

She took a breath. “It’s me. Amanda.”

“Amanda?” he sounded shocked, and he clambered out of the bag clumsily. “Honey, are you all right?”

She started to say yes, but it came out, “No.”

He rushed to her side, checking her, his eyes full of concern. “Are you hurt? Do you need the whistle?”

“No,” she said, brushing away tears. “It’s just…”

He stroked her cheek. “What?”

“I just had to tell you I’m sorry,” she admitted through clenched teeth. “It was wrong of me to blackmail you. It’s…it’s
not
me.”

He stared at her, silent.

“I was just so… I just wanted this adventure,” she said. “But it’s not worth it.”

Maybe it was a trick of the light, but he seemed to be smiling. “Thanks for that.”

“Okay.” Feeling like an idiot, she started to turn, to leave.

“Anything else?” he asked softly.

She let out a choppy laugh.

“And I hate frickin’ camping,” she bit out. “I’m starving, I couldn’t get my tarp up, the ground’s really hard, and I’d kill to be in a hotel.”

He burst out laughing, a clear, ringing sound that echoed through the night sky.